Cultural narratives such as immigrant narratives, minority narratives, and a combination of the two connect literature and history as the stories of the people of America.  We learn about one another through the telling of stories.  Cultural narratives describe people’s cultures including, but not limited to, their backgrounds, their beliefs, their languages, and their purposes of coming to and living in America.  Cultural narratives can represent the American Dream, the American Nightmare, or a mixture of both the dream and the nightmare.  Analyzing the immigrant narrative, the minority narrative, and a heterogeneous mixture of both immigrant and minority literature by using the texts we have read during the first half of the course, the cultural narrative becomes a fundamental model for understanding the American culture, objective one of the American Immigrant course.  The cultural narrative also guides the reader to an understanding of the stages within immigrant narratives that occur, which satisfies objective two of the course.  Comparing and contrasting the American Dream versus the American Nightmare through the different literary works assists the reader with understanding how immigrant narratives and minority narratives share similarities and differences simultaneously, which identifies and fulfills the third objective of the course.

            The immigrant narrative is a fundamental model of American culture because the reader witnesses the narrator’s desire for the American Dream, the narrator’s decline in American society, and then finally the narrator’s positive attitude toward fully assimilating into the American society.  In Anzia Yezierska’s immigrant narrative “Soap and Water,” Yezierska begins with a desire to graduate from an American college and become an American teacher—the first step in assimilation for immigrants, a desire for the American Dream (105).  Yezierska’s dean refuses to give Yezierska her diploma and chooses not to recommend her as a teacher based solely on Yezierska’s appearance (105).  Yezierska’s American Dream flushes down the drain like the water of the laundry service she works at; however, Yezierska had reached her breaking point with the disrespectful close-minded Miss Whiteside and she is not denied her diploma at the end of the conference with Dean Whiteside (106).  Yezierska attempts to work as a teacher, but she is denied acceptance like she had experienced by her peers in college (107).  Yezierska feels that the teaching industry, like the college she attended, is a place she “would never be taken in” because of her stained appearance (107).  Yezierska loses faith in finding the American Dream through isolation at college, isolation in the job market, and isolation from her uneducated peers at the laundry service (109).  After losing the desire for the American Dream, Yezierska encounters one of her past chemistry professors, Miss Van Ness, and she becomes elated with a feeling of acceptance—acceptance from a person “from the clean world” (110).  Yezierska’s world changes and she finds the American Dream, thus completing the cycle of the immigrant narrative.

            Like Yezierska, Lali goes on a quest for the American Dream in Nicholasa Mohr’s “The English Lesson.”  Lali attempts to learn English in order to better herself and not to succumb to her husband’s desire for her—a desire for her only to work with him at his restaurant and not to find her own American Dream but to support his American Dream.  Lali desires to leave her husband’s restaurant and “every evening she found herself waiting for William [her classmate] to come in to work, looking forward to his presence” (Mohr 29).  Lali’s American Dream is a new desire, but she is becoming more independent from her husband and she is learning English—her first step to achieving her American Dream.  Lali’s English class ends and she is reluctant about being able to remember what she has learned.  Lali’s dream seems to be far away but William keeps her spirits up like Miss Van Ness does for Yezierska (Mohr 34).  Walking to work on their last night of class, Lali and William become “oblivious to the scene they created for the people who stared and pointed at them as they continued on their way to Rudi” which suggests Lali is assimilating into the dominant culture.  Lali does not appear worried about the others around her because she is becoming one of them.  To Lali, the others—the dominant culture—include her or soon will.  The cultural narrative is an essential representation to understand American culture because the reader sees the immigrants’ desires for the American Dream, their temporary societal downfalls, and finally their assimilation to the dominant culture which explain objective one of the course and help the reader understand people. . . .

[Tanya]

When I signed up for American Immigrant LITR 4333, I went into it with the attitude that I was fulfilling one of the many literature courses that I was required to take as a literature major. I had no opinion one-way or the other as to what the course would truly entail. Just a few short weeks into the course I was made so aware as to what this class is all about. Each of us has a story, a voice, and a desire and right to be heard. No matter where we were born, where our relatives were born, or how we came about settling in America we are all a part of this great “melting-pot” of society. America and Americans were built on great stories. No matter where you are in this country there is an underlying narrative or event that has shaped that particular region into the place that it has become. Whether we realize this as true or not each of our identities has been created by a story, “our story”. . . .

[Robin]